


schrodinger's zombie cat

by inkknight101



Category: Voltron - Fandom, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A little bit anyway, Acquaintances to Friends to Family to Enemies, Allura's Childhood, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Angst and Fluff, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Enemies to Allies, F/M, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Healing, Lotor's Origin Story, M/M, Minor Klance, Team as Family, The Fall of the Galra Empire, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt, Trans-Dimensional Meteor, and keith, beyond the archive warning, first chapter is sparse, in that someone who died lives and someone who lives dies, mostly - Freeform, narti - Freeform, next week will be longer, no gratuitous violence/hurt, post s5, roleswap!Au, story centers mainly on kova, time to channel my s5 waiting angst into fic!!, very very tentative allies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-15 08:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13609704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkknight101/pseuds/inkknight101
Summary: "Schrödinger proposed a scenario with a cat in a locked steel chamber, wherein the cat's life or death depended on the state of a radioactive atom. According to Schrödinger, the unknown state of the atom implies that the cat remains both alive and dead until the state has been observed- whether the atom has radioactively decayed, or remained stable."In which Kova observes her mistress’s son, and chooses sacrifice over loyalty.





	1. cat got your tongue?

**Author's Note:**

> my soul physically hurts from waiting for s5 so have this while i lose my mind and avoid homework/responsibilities! this is a story about our main characters told from a cat's POV, except i don't actually have a cat so kova is based of off the kitten my friend oz rescued from the streets of brooklyn and named toby after a character in the great comet. 
> 
> there is angst and fluff in this fic, but not in equal measure. you have been warned.
> 
> updates weekly unless otherwise noted!

Lotor was not granted much stability as he grew into young adulthood, but the one certainty Kova had seen him cling to since childhood was this: he was not stupid.

This certainty was in contrast to the jeers from superior officers Lotor was subject to- even the son of Zarkon was subject to rigid military training and discipline- the silent posturing from peers in hallways as he passed by, even the whispery gossip that trailed his footsteps like a plague quieter than the silent pad of Kova’s paws.

_Half-breed, weakling, Altean, dangerous._

Lotor was not stupid. Kova noted the defining features of his personality for future reference as she slunk down vent shafts and yowled at cadets who tried to trap her tail with their heels. Lotor was wary, cutting, mouthy to his commanders and smarting from being left with his nannies and no company his own age. He knew that it was easier to cut shadows down instead of looking over his shoulder and around corners for danger, better to be untouchable than vulnerable, braver to thrash out screaming at the way of things rather than submit to the wrong way.

 _If only that last one was a family trait_ , she says to the little space dust bunny that has taken up residence in her little nest, traitorous. The puffball floats onto their back and stares up at her with glazed eyes, and she flicks it into the air with a sharp twist of her tail.

 

Kova is not here to lament or question, she is here to monitor. The prince did not remember much before being shoved into a cryopod, though he knew enough to turn the sclera of his eyes yellow and his hair sacred Altean white in defiance of his father, of the Empire, of the shame of _half-breed_. Everything else he does in secret, behind walls impenetrable by all but Kova’s keen vision. She sprawls out and bats the stupid little scaultrite trinket some general waves above her on a string with her eyes fixed on the distant part of the ship Lotor works in until the quintant turns over. She sees him sowing seeds of dissent among the Galra without fur, with pupils instead of a sheen of yellow in their eyes, Galra ashamed of half their heritage. She watches as he prowls the laboratories of the Druids on fake patrol, hungry eyes drinking in the glow of beakers and complex runes scribbled on holo-boards, equations that he replicates perfectly in his bunk on datapads and shoves under his sleeping mat. _Lotor seeks not only to survive, but his birthright to thrive and his need to defy,_ Kova notes after Lotor falls into fitful slumber, legs shaking and head lolling.

She also sees some of the half-Galra he pursues waver when he speaks of allowing colonies autonomy, albeit with secret limits woven into treaties and laws. A strange kind of dissatisfaction twists their features before their walls can be fully rebuilt. These also happen to be the Galra approached for additional check-ups and training by the medical staff on board- some pale fellow, Umaz? Oolak?- and eventually quietly reassigned to more distant posts by Commander Thace.

Kova crouches low, unsheathing her claws and narrowing in on the jugular of a new puffball drawn into the hangar by the purple lights, as yet another freshly minted soldier speaks silently with Ulaz and boards a fighter ship, hand clutching her few belongings and a dagger. What does not concern her charge does not concern Kova.

 

As the empire snakes through the galaxy and Zarkon forgets how he cried shocked tears as his son stumbled out of the wreckage of a forgotten Altean base and into his arms, Lotor will do what he always does when something he desperately wants is held out of his reach: he makes it himself. Slowly but surely, Lotor makes a family for himself- and Kova, despite all the king’s druids and all the king’s men, is the only one to recognize the danger of this, of Lotor’s changing philosophy.

Zethrid was first, years and years before the others, and they had built up such a camaraderie that Zethrid had no reservations about yelling at Lotor to “hurry up or else your ass is gonna get sucked out into space” during training. Kova had analyzed the social dynamics between the two of them long ago, when Lotor had tripped over Zethrid’s untied boot laces and smashed tuber paste all over his uniform and her face, how shocked and relived Lotor had looked when Zethrid laughed and laughed and laughed instead of punching him into the next room as she did to a cadet who tried to pinch her ears. Her conclusion at the time was that the friendship was neutral at worst and mutually beneficial at best- Lotor no longer worried about fights with jealous, insecure cadets, and Zethrid was able to get the seven meals that her body needed daily and that the canteen would not give her. Privately, when she was sure her mistress wasn’t paying attention, she thought that a sister would do Lotor some good, for once.

It was only after the second incident in the canteen that Kova could feel cold premonition shivering up her back, crawling between her ears.


	2. momentum gathering

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lotor strikes a deal in the present, and Kova reflects on the first instance of Lotor's defiance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so so sorry for late update in my defense the s5 trailer killed me and black panther sent me to heaven
> 
> also i got lazy and decided to speed up in approaching the present day bc that's what i really wanted to explore with this fic!!

Of all the consequences that Lotor had predicted from the second his sword sliced across Narti’s shoulders, a tentative diplomatic meeting with the members of Voltron was not part of his calculations- not even in the most improbable outliers of potential outcomes.  
Being the one to call for a meeting whilst he had the upper hand, and then hosting the new Paladins of Voltron and their most trusted allies on board his prototypical ship seemed even more impossible. And yet, the paladins dematerialize their bayards and agree to sit in his central command, although in various postures of of grief, across from where he and his generals recline in their seats. Granted, he would prefer a full display of power with all his generals matching the paladins, but Narti was still immobile from… the earlier incident. No physical harm had come to her, at least, though Lotor could feel Ezor’s eyes on him as she silently researches healing for the minds of telepathic beings on her data pad. It is Acxa, surprisingly, who is hard-pressed to forgive Lotor for slicing open Kova’s pitiable form. But that could not matter yet, not now, not until he knew exactly what Voltron’s intentions were.  
For although they had won a substantial amount of ground in the war, the Voltron Coalition is still staggering from the brutal losses sustained in the taking. The vulnerability splayed out before him was something Lotor could not afford to let slide by, not with his head still worth the ransom of an entire sector and his generals threatened with enslavement aboard the most depraved of Galra command’s ships. Each being present at his strategy table looks as defeated as they might have been if Fath- had Zarkon taken control of Voltron after all, in that fateful battle nearly a decapheebe past. The surviving rebel fighters that huddle near the entrance are no better, keeping wary eyes on the meeting before them, speaking in ragged whispers: custody of Olia’s children, break radio silence, send word to Pollux, summon Slav to tend to the massive damage to the Altean castle-ship, a tailor to sew traditional Earth garb-  
The green paladin is the only one who seems uncaring of her situation, curled up sobbing in the arms of a rebel commander uncannily similar to her in appearance, whose cloudy gaze seems to bore holes in the distance even as his hands rhythmically stroke the paladin’s hair. The yellow paladin clearly attempts to emit strength, but the set of his jaw and hard line of his shoulders are diminished by the steady, silent tears slipping down his face. The Altean advisor prowls behind the both of them like a territorial khoonkhavra, eyes narrowed and gait stiff. Red-paladin-dressed-in-blue is devastated; the steady hands and sharp eyes that make him an excellent marksman, as Acxa begrudgingly admits, are shaky and bruised and blended, red and swollen and wet. Lotor muses, mentally flipping over mission briefings from each rebel skirmish they’ve had up to this point. If Acxa’s reports are accurate, then the former blue paladin has lost what little he called his own, out here alone in space. The two masked Blades would seem stoic to any non-Galra, but Lotor notes their scent, eyes their posture to conclude that losing a young rebel fighter still took its toll. The only thing keeping the Champion, as he was so tritely named, from leaping across the table and murdering the lot of them is the hard presence of the princess at his left hand- the hand currently wrapped around the black bayard so tightly that if Lotor knew nothing about the properties of trans-dimensional meteors, he might think it would explode from the force of his grip.  
The Princess of Altea, who is truly the only paladin at this table worthy of Lotor’s respect. Her guilt and grief drips from the incline of her head, but her quintessence sparks dangerously at her fingertips, and her posture is strong and grim. Not once has her gaze drifted to the empty seat between the current red paladin and the original black paladin. Even to a stranger the air between them is ghostly, the chair a placeholder for a body that left behind nothing to bury, the fallen bridge between two roles intimately tied to one another in a way that the current occupiers will never achieve beyond kinship. Yes, for the Paladins to come to his threshold in this state means that they are in dire, dire straits indeed.  
Situation assessment complete, Lotor makes a show of inhaling deeply, rolling his shoulders and wringing his neck side to side. He takes his quiznaking time, for once, crossing his ankles while he thinks of an appropriate line to begin these negotiations.  
Lotor spares a single moment to wonder, idly: who in Voltron’s command will be punished for allowing a former paladin of Voltron and past ancestral member of the Blade of Marmora, to sacrifice his life as if it had no more worth than the dirt that sloughs off a comet?

\- - - - - - - - - - - - 

Paws still coated with the blood spilled across the canteen’s floor, Kova groused over the unpleasant thwip thwip of her soles sticking to the ground as she padded down poorly lit violet corridors searching for a damned-above faucet, a commodity that suddenly seems to be scarce in the wake of Lotor’s actions.  
See, though the halflings named Ezor and Acxa tumbled into Lotor’s bubble with little warning (as usual with Ezor), clearheaded determination (as usual with Acxa), and fully earned loyalty, the circumstances were not as amusing as accidental food projectiles.  
The base’s commissary was unusually loud and bustling on this particular day. Kova ducked and swerved and even held her tail between her teeth at one point, but somehow the hard toe of a boot always managed to kick against her ribcage, her bad ear, her rear end. Eventually, she was forced to hiss at a cadet with an especially poor sweat reflex, and dart into shadow in order to locate her charges (and oh, the indignity of needing to make feral noises! Kova may not have been proper royalty in millennia, but even a disowned queen has to have standards). New recruits stumbled over their boots and mispronounced ranks and honorifics, their superiors sneering at them while flicking bits of mashed gruber at their drooped ears and heated necks. Lotor and Zethrid had already carved out their own little planet in the darkest corner of the lunchroom, alone and given a wide berth- as if they were both starved weblums in mating season. Lotor spoke in low tones about possible Altean relics discovered in Sector 14, Zethrid interrupting with the insistence that they should hijack a command and be the first ones to nab the theoretically Altean artifacts. Kova curled up into the shadow between their chairs, flicking her ears (still stinging, by the way, from the latest idiot cadet).  
“I mean, it’s not like your father is gonna actually execute you,” said Zethrid. She idly poked at her pile of Chardate pods, wincing when the wrinkly skin lifted and clung to her spork like a particularly viscous biofilm. “Threaten you into submission with it, maybe, but no way the Crown Prince is actually gonna get- you know-”  
Zethrid mimed slashing her throat with the blunt end of the spork, accidentally flinging the Chardate skin into Lotor’s cup in the process. Lotor sighed, plucking it out with ginger disgust and flicked it towards Zethrid’s headfur, groaning when she hopped up and caught it in her mouth instead with a wolfish grin. Lotor propped his chin up on his fist, rolling his eyes to the ceiling, and sighed.  
“If only we all possessed your blunt methods, Zethrid. Unfortunately, given that my father had no qualms about abandoning his long-lost son in military training, how do you think he will react to said exiled prince failing to be anything but a perfect model of obedience and discipline?”  
Kova observed the purse of Zethrid’s lips, sealing the protests that were bound to slip out in honest objection anyway. Zethrid has long argued with Lotor whenever he refers to Zarkon’s indifference to his existence. Trust me, Lotor, Zethrid said the first time Lotor raged against his father in front of her, an incident which ended in him staring rigidly at the floor to hide angry tears. Zethrid did not comment on the words that still lingered in the air, the hurt that Lotor’s anger festered in. She only listened, carving a little piece of pilfered scaultrite next to him, scarred hands twisting and smoothing the crystal. When your father is an ass, no attention is way better than the alternative.  
When Lotor finally lifted his head, she dropped the little piece of scaultrite into his lap, carved into the artful shape of a helmet fit for a Galran emperor.  
(Kova nicked the crystal a few quintants after the fact, in another fit of Lotor’s rage. Stunned by his father’s decision to select another cadet, Sendak, to be trained by him personally, Lotor hurled his chest plate at his bedroom door, uncaring of the noise or of his storage panel popping open. Her mistress’s main directive is to keep Lotor obedient and in line from afar, after all, and a reminder of his claim to the throne treads upon “rebellious” territory.)  
Today, though, Lotor is too fixated on the artifacts to argue much. Before Lotor can resume his “debriefing”, as he called it, or “smarty pants rambling”, as Zethrid called it, the ring of a devastating crack from across the room interrupted him. Kova’s neck prickled, the sensation of the Black Swarm zipping up her spinal cord to hum in her ears, dance on the tip of her tongue, singing premonition, premonition, premonition.  
A young half-breed cadet lay huddled on the floor, blood staining the short strands of her blue hair purple. Another half Galra stood above her defensively, pink head trembling and fists half raised in front of her. The red-faced seven foot tall commander in front of them, gruel dripping down his ears and twitching nose, was unimpressed.  
“D-don’t hurt her again!” shouted the girl still standing. “Sh-Sh-sh-shuh didn’t mean anything by it! Leave us a-alone!”  
The commander- Prorok something or other, Kova remembered in the aftermath- bared his fangs and snarled. Instantly, the cadet flinched away as if he’d struck her across the face, curling in on herself and trembling.  
“What kind of pitiful excuses for Galran soldiers are you?” Prorok said, still sneering. “It’s bad enough half-breeds are allowed into our command instead of our kitchens or our bedrooms, but you scum better have the decency to remember your place.” A slow smirk spread across his face. Kova wondered, in an odd moment of disconnect, whether the threatening effect would be ruined if goo dripped from his fur into his sharp smile. “I think, Ezor, a week spent in the Druids’ labs will do nicely as a reminder for the both of you.”  
A subtle inhale sweet across the room from less impassive cadets, while the most emotional response from any of the command was a raised eyebrow. Insubordinates banished into the clutches of the Druids even for a quintant hardly ever returned. The pink half-Galra practically collapsed, inching close to her friend and gurgling in distress- a trait from the other half of her ancestry, most likely.  
“Nooooo!” wailed Ezor. “Please, please, please, no!”  
Kova watched the set of Prorok’s gaze, how his fists clenched. The situation was dangerous and explosive, but so long as her charges kept out of the way they had no reason to worry-  
Which was, of course, the moment Lotor chose to stand and, in hissing tones bordering on challenging, said, “What did you just say, Commander Prorok?” Zethrid rose to stand at his right hand after only a beat of shock, ears twitching nervously, but nonetheless baring her teeth right back to Prorok.  
Prorok who, judging by his narrowed gaze, was unsure of the territory he was treading. Yes, discipline was rigidly enforced among Galrans, but how far could he push that with the emperor’s own son? Regardless of his rather… lax parenting attitude, Zarkon disliked when Lotor became involved in something unknown to him, and stepped outside of Zarkon’s pre-determined acceptable courses of action. Decision apparently made, Prorok let his fangs glint violet and white as he replied, “This is not a matter that concerns you, Cadet. Return to your seats immediately.”  
Beside him, Zethrid bristled at the blatant disrespect to Lotor’s actual title, and loudly unsheathed her claws. The entire commissary immediately fell whisper silent, any snickers or sly betting immediately abandoned. This was a detail Kova would process later, deep in daydreams and reviewing the day’s events. For now her eyes and her ears were trained solely on her charge, her mistress’s worry, the wronged son of an emperor - whose expression turned to tempered steel. This was an unprecedented reaction to previous conflicts Lotor endured in the past. No deferential eye movements, no angry grinding of fangs that would nick his lips, no blank stares into space as if to forget the fact that he chose to remain silent. Kova’s heartbeat fluttered, hind muscles tensing with the urge to leap and strike- though whether she wanted to strike Lotor, Prorok, or the harsh gaze of the commanders sitting above it all, she did not know.  
Lotor stared directly into Prorok’s eyes. And smiled.  
Kova thought it unlikely that anyone heard Lotor’s quick spiel, so daring and outrageous that he surely would have been stripped of title and property before being exiled to the farthest work camp the empire possessed. In any case, Zethrid made a rude sign at Prorok behind Lotor’s shoulder, Prorok lunged before Lotor could finish, the commissary immediately burst into uproar as cadets scrambled to escape Prorok’s wake, and Kova, almost lazily, let her saber-claws unsheath.  
See, though now her mistress has absolutely no qualms about experimenting on prisoners who cannot possibly consent to her somatic upgrades, there was a time in-between their rebirth and their total corruption when her only test subject would be Kova- a booster shot of quintessence here, splitting nerves in a brain center there, truncating her tail and sharpening her teeth.  
Of course, there were the mecha type adjustments, as well.  
Really, it was akin to a dance that Kova did not lead, an invisible partner whose grip was unbreakable. Her muscles released their tension, she twisted to avoid any defensive attacks, and Kova clawed Prorok from his left shoulder down, down, down- 

And so one hasty escape and screaming Galra commander later, Kova stood under the spray of some decontaminating laboratory shower in the Druids’ wing, wondering just how Lotor would save him and his friends from colliding straight into Zarkon’s wrath. As she batted at her ears attempting to dislodge the blood-deionized water mixture clogging it, the atoms of her spine re-aligned down to her forehead, and her hearing projected, her eyes turned cloudy and yellow. In the astral void, her mistress appeared in a flurry of bright gas and hot flame before her.  
“What,” said Haggar, hiss tightening around Kova’s neck, “happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in apology another chapter will be cranked out by saturday!! 
> 
> scream at me @ kitkatkogane.tumblr.com

**Author's Note:**

> this chapter is shorter than the others will be! hopefully i can get the next chapter out in time before my cog midterm...
> 
> yell @ me to become friends on tumblr (adriftanchor.tumblr.com) or yell with me about vld s5 (kitkatkogane.tumblr.com)


End file.
